Kyrie Irving is no stranger to taking and making big shots under the bright lights and heavy pressure that comes with playing in the NBA.

He just doesn’t always do it on an empty stomach and with no hydration.

The eight-time All-Star guard has done a lot in his pro basketball career, including put together a highlight reel of game-winning, overtime-forcing, and/or comeback-sparking clutch buckets during his stints with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Boston Celtics, Brooklyn Nets and Dallas Mavericks. His peak moment on the court was in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals, when his tiebreaking 3-pointer over Stephen Curry with just under one minute left helped the Cavaliers win the franchise’s first championship.

On Sunday, Irving and the Mavericks were in a back-and-forth battle with the reigning champion Denver Nuggets. With 2.8 seconds remaining, Dallas had the ball with the score tied. Irving — who finished with 24 points, 9 assists and 3 steals — took the inbounds pass, and with 7-foot Denver superstar Nikola Jokic in his face, hit a left-handed (Kyrie is a natural right-hander) running shot from just past the free throw line that dropped in at the buzzer.

Considering the degree of difficulty, immediate reaction around the basketball world was that it was one of the greatest game-winners of all time.

Adding to the degree of difficulty was that Irving, who announced his commitment to Islam in 2021 and has been observing Ramadan at least since then, was playing Sunday’s game while fasting for the Muslim holy month. In his postgame press conference, the 31-year-old talked about the experience, saying it’s “nothing short of a miracle” that he made it through the game.

Ramadan began on March 10 this year and will go through April 9, which means NBA players observing the holy month will be fasting through an important stretch of the regular season in which playoff and play-in tournament spots will be determined. Some college basketball players observing Ramadan will be fasting through the upcoming NCAA and NIT tournaments. And some college players whose teams didn’t qualify for the postseason may be fasting during a time when they’re training for this summer’s NBA draft.

Last year for Ramadan, Adama Sanogo of the national champion UConn Huskies was fasting during the team’s NCAA tournament run. Sanogo didn’t just survive while fasting, he thrived — the 6-foot-9 center was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four; he is now a rookie with the NBA’s Chicago Bulls.

Irving has helped Dallas won three of its four games since this year’s Ramadan began, and in that lone loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, he put up 36 points and 12 assists. His standout performances while fasting will always conjure comparisons to Hakeem Olajuwon, the Hall of Fame center who observed Ramadan throughout his career in the 1980s and ’90s, but didn’t start fasting on game days until the ’94-95 season, when he was around the age Irving is now. That Olajuwon made it through Ramadan that season and still led the Houston Rockets to an NBA championship set the bar for athletes like Kyrie Irving — who continues proving that the inner strength gained during Ramadan can propel Muslims to amazing things.